In 1903, following a tour of the cotton manufacturing districts of the USA, Thomas Young wrote an extensive account contrasting the positive and negative attitudes of American and Lancashire entrepreneurs towards new technology. No doubt, some Lancashire entrepreneurs displayed these attitudes. However, the expansion of the Lancashire textile industry up to 1914 was not based on the investment decisions of a stereotypical entrepreneur. Instead, as previous chapters have shown, different types of entrepreneur created and became embedded in different models of industrial organization. Perhaps their only common feature was, like entrepreneurs anywhere, they straddled multiple organizations and institutions. The early cotton entrepreneurs transformed prior business structures to operate in multiple partnership networks, which often extended to important infrastructure development projects. Elsewhere in Lancashire, the exclusion of the operative class from the political process and the alienation of the Factory System led to a new wave of social enterprise founded on the principles of co-operation. In parallel, the locally financed enterprises of the earlier phases of the industrial revolution evolved into multi-business and multi-plant enterprises, and the giant trusts of the early twentieth century.

Such diversity alone should caution against blanket accusations of entrepreneurial failure. It is undoubtedly true that Lancashire faced pressure from overseas competition after 1870. However, this was nothing new. As chapter 3 has shown, some mill owners wheeled out the threat of foreign competition whenever legislators raised the prospect of restrictive legislation.